Jaycees Chapters? In Prison?

Convicts Find Path To Power, Prestige

PONTIAC, Ill. — Watson Gray isn't the kind of guy you'd expect to be president of the local Jaycees.

When he was 18, Gray and a friend kidnapped a young woman from a telephone booth on Chicago's South Side.

Later, he served time for armed robbery.

A judge finally put him away for life for hiring someone to murder the co-owner of his carpet store in 1980.

But Gray has earned a certain position of authority and respect within his community-Pontiac Correctional Center, one of Illinois' three maximum-security prisons. For 15 years, he has been an officer of the inmates' chapter of the Jaycees service organization.

Lately, he has even entered the limelight of the outside world, as the author of an unusual proposal to let prisoners pay for their own college and vocational training.

In an era in which many people believe prisoners have a way-too-cozy lifestyle at the expense of taxpayers, Gray's idea offers an unprecedented chance for inmates in Illinois to provide for themselves.

A former businessman with a degree in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin, Gray, 47, says he realizes how strongly people on the outside feel about prisoners' privileges.

"I realize people out there think we ought to be hanged," Gray said recently, standing outside the prison auditorium where the last class of college graduates received diplomas. "Some of them would probably like to come in here and do it themselves."

Earlier this summer, Illinois officials decided to shut down the college classes and vocational schools at Pontiac, Menard and Stateville Correctional Centers, the state's three big maximum-security prisons. The new state budget includes no money for those programs.

But the Jaycees presented a plan to keep part of the educational program running at Pontiac with money raised from small businesses they run or want to operate within the confines of the prison.

The author of the plan was Gray, a hulking gray-haired man with the baby face of the 1965 photograph taken on the occasion of his first arrest. He was the president of the Pontiac Jaycees this spring when the budget cuts were first announced.

Prison officials note that they're not dealing with the Naperville Jaycees here. Officials say they want to make sure the inmates could keep the college classes running, even if they were allowed to expand their business operations to include a laundermat, as proposed. Such an expansion would add considerably to the Jaycees officers' power within the prison.

Still, state officials take Gray and the Jaycees sufficiently seriously to consider the proposal.

"There is a good working relationship between the Jaycees and the administration," said Gary Vilsoet, a prison administrator. "They provide leadership among the inmates. People know, if you're a Jaycee and you mess up, that's it, you're out."

The Jaycees came to such a position of privilege under the leadership of Gray and fellow inmates Ford "Mick" Ranson and Marty Norpell in the 1970s. Before that, the group was dormant.

"We thought we could do something better," said Ranson, 42, now serving a sentence for murdering his former cellmate in 1985.

U.S. prisons have had Jaycees chapters since the 1950s, when some members of the national organization decided it might be helpful in rehabilitation, said Stephen Lawson, executive vice president of the 75-year-old national organization based in Tulsa and known formally as the Junior Chamber of Commerce.

Many prison officials enthusiastically welcome the chapters into their institutions for that reason, he said.

"The feeling was that, if they could learn some sense of community while in prison, it would help them later when they were released," said Lawson.

The Jaycees are the biggest service organization with chapters inside Illinois prisons, although the Toastmasters group also has a chapter inside the medium-security East Moline Correctional Center. A few social organizations, such as the Lifers, a group for inmates serving life sentences, also have sprung up at some prisons.

After forming the chapter inside Pontiac, the Jaycees began to open concession stands in the prison yard, then two portrait studios where inmates get pictures to send to friends and family.

The prisoners come up with the money through their $10-a-month necessities allowances and money earned at their in-prison jobs or sent by friends.

The group now has 55 inmate members, including several on Death Row.

Until his execution in March, convicted murderer Hernando Williams was the chapter coordinator in that section of Pontiac.

Gray acknowledges that part of the incentive for running the group is the "juice," or power, within the prison that such a leadership position brings.

Prison administrators deal with the Jaycees because they know they can help out with morale and crowd control.

Prisoners, in turn, respect Jaycees because they have access to goods and services.